


Christmas Tomorrow

by dizzy



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-18
Updated: 2009-11-18
Packaged: 2017-10-03 08:23:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dizzy/pseuds/dizzy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story in which Sam is emo and Daniel makes it better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Christmas Tomorrow

Daniel is lounging in bed when Sam gets home. He's wearing pajama bottoms, his feet and his chest bare. His hair's messed up in that way that it gets when he showers and doesn't do anything but run a towel through it. Spread around him are the signs of a long, lazy day spent playing catch up - pads of yellow paper, highlighters and pens and markers, a stack of journals marked in various places and his laptop resting on his thighs above the blanket.

She feels like chastising him for his lack of awareness. Ten years in the field and he's still painfully oblivious to any sort of disruption once he's in his zone. She keeps her mouth shut because she's attempting to put off the inevitable... that moment where she snaps and takes out her frustration and exhaustion on him. Christmas ended a few short hours ago and her holiday was spent in the control room going over page after page of diagnostic results until they figured out the glitch in the programming that kept making the gate jump from planet to planet.

She toes off her shoes and kicks them across the room. The resulting thump is enough to jar him. His head jerks up so quickly that his glasses slide down his nose a little. She finds that cute, normally. Endearing, even. Right now it grates on her nerves. She crosses her arms over her chest, almost hugging herself.

"You're home." He smiles at her and pushes the computer to the side, making a half-hearted attempt at stacking the journals and notebooks. He gathers up the pens and markers and dumps them unceremoniously into the coffee mug on the nightstand. He looks disgustingly well rested and happy to see her. "Everything fixed?"

_You'd know if you'd called to check on me even once_, Sam thinks. She just nods and gives him a tight smile and heads into the bathroom.

She contemplates a shower. She wants to sleep but she feels that sort of restlessness that wraps itself around her sometimes like a steel band on her chest. She splashes water on her face and brushes her teeth, changes out of the clothes she'd worn the mountain almost twenty four hours before and into the shirt she'd slept in two nights ago. Figures, she thinks, that he didn't do the laundry.

She tugs at the elastic holding her messy braid together and lets her hair fall loose. She brushes it until the tangles disappear and then puts it into a loose ponytail. She stares at herself in the mirror for a few minutes, disappointed at what she sees. Every insecurity she has rises to the surface. She's getting older and her body reflects it. Her figure is more solid now. She is pale enough that the dark circles under her eyes truly stand out and she can see the wrinkles in her skin more deeply than normal. She thinks of what Daniel sees when he looks at her and it makes her turn her head away. If Daniel has any complaints, then he's plenty smart enough to keep them to himself at least.

The bed is cleaned off more properly when she comes back out. Daniel has put the pillows back where they belong and the covers are straightened, with her side pulled back. She can hear him rattling around in the kitchen and is curious in a distant sort of way but the pull of the big, nice bed is more immediate.

Her head has just hit the pillow when he walks back into the room. She curls in a little closer on herself, her body as near to the edge of the bed as she can get without actually falling over. She hopes he doesn't say anything to her. Hopes he doesn't try to touch her or even look at her took long. She wants to be invisible. To disappear until this mood has faded away and she feels like herself again.

Of course, she isn't invisible and he doesn't ignore her. He says to her, "Roll over. On your back. Wait, take your shirt off first."

It's easier to comply than to ask why, so she does. She feels his weight settle over her and his hands touch her skin, warm and slicked with something that smells like vanilla. Her ponytail gets pushed out of the way and he rubs at her shoulders and down her back, his hands seeking out knots and sore places that she hadn't even been aware of. She feels herself begin to loosen... more than just a physical reaction. Something inside of her feels warmed now and growing warmer still with every pass of his big, clever hands.

She can feel how he's reacting to their proximity every time he leans forward into her and it makes her ache a little for something more physically substantial but right now she doesn't have the energy and she knows somehow instinctively that he isn't angling for anything.

He doesn't talk for a long time. She wonders if he thinks she's fallen asleep, but he doesn't stop the massage. He shifts his weight to go lower, peeling back the blankets and starting from the bottom this time. He takes first one foot and then the other in hand and digs in until her toes actually tingle. Her calves are next, then her thighs and then he's at her back again. The oil is mostly gone from his hands now and there's more friction in the press of skin to skin.

She doesn't even realize that she's crying until his hands come up to grasp her shaking shoulders. He lowers himself down on top of her and kisses the back of her head. With an arm hooked around her middle he rolls them both onto their sides. He kisses her shoulder once and then again, and his hands rubs her side in slow circles. He doesn't ask her to talk, doesn't ask her what's wrong, but his presence is enough to pull the words from her.

"I don't even know what's wrong." She finally says, the last word escaping on a hiccuping little gasp. "I'm just so tired. It's not Christmas anymore and I'm so tired. This time last year I was on Atlantis and I wanted to be back here... now I'm not, I'm here, and..."

"And you're tired." He pushes himself up on an elbow and leans over to kiss her on the cheek. He lingers there and when he talks she can feel his breath on her skin. "So right now you'll sleep and when you wake up, I'll make breakfast and we can open presents. It'll be Christmas for us tomorrow. Can you do that? Can you sleep?"

"I think so." When she speaks, it's in a voice that's both smaller and more steady. She catches his hand with hers and squeezes it. "Thank you."

"Sam." Daniel gently chides her. "It's what I'm here for, okay? Just let me be here."

She almost, almost smiles. "Love you," she whispers, and starts to fall asleep.


End file.
